


Lethe

by wyvernwood



Category: Original Work
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Escape from Prison, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Prison, Public Nudity, Public Torture, Spies & Secret Agents, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-06
Updated: 2020-12-06
Packaged: 2021-03-10 00:47:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,806
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27865585
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wyvernwood/pseuds/wyvernwood
Summary: Captive in an enemy country, unwilling to reveal his secrets, a spy is publicly tortured. His lover, unknown to him also a spy for a more secretive organization, takes care of him as best he can. Somehow, he has to get them both out of there.
Relationships: Original Male Spy/Original Male Spy & Government-employed Torturers
Comments: 2
Kudos: 4
Collections: Torture Flash Exchange 2020





	Lethe

**Author's Note:**

  * For [FleetSparrow](https://archiveofourown.org/users/FleetSparrow/gifts).



"Cairelon is a great country!" shouted the torturer.

In rough unison, the crowd shouted its agreement. 

"An honest country! No secrets!"

Another shout, as loud as the first.

"Our enemies torture their prisoners in darkness! Who knows what horrible things they do to innocents! Here, we don't hide. Here, the people see and judge!"

The cheering after this longer speech went on and on. Votun's dread rose, no matter how steady he breathed, no matter what mantra he tried to clear his mind. 

The crowd's voice only died down when the torturer waved his hands for quiet. "Bring the first criminal." 

The assistant who held Votun's chains took a step. Votun followed. The first day, he had balked and been dragged up onto the dais. The torturers made allowances for the first time. He wanted to resist again, but he couldn't make himself do it. They'd said they'd cut his leg tendons if he did, and he believed them. He'd never walk again. A part of him still thought there would be an afterward in which he'd want to be able to walk: that he'd survive.

Votun knew there wasn't much chance of that. He wasn't going to tell them Yttnik secrets, and nothing else he could do would end these displays before he died. Maybe for some men, the public nature of the Cairelian system would protect them; maybe there were those who knew how to play on the conscience of the crowd. Votun had no such ability. 

All the crowd wanted from him was to hear him scream. He would give them that, endure, and survive another day, he told himself. He couldn't help looking at Kiun. 

Votun would have liked to scream less, for Kiun's sake. Kiun loved him, and he knew it hurt Kiun to see him suffer. For Kiun he would have been stoic, made it easier to bear, but the crowd would simply have urged the torturer on. So Kiun would only have seen him suffer more. That, too, had been made clear on the first day.

It seemed so much longer than that. It was as if Votun had been coming here to be tortured, to scream for the Cairelian public, every day for weeks. But this was only the third day. 

Votun held his wrists together overhead. The movement ached, a premonition. He had been bound thus on the second day, dangling his entire weight from the wrist manacles when he sagged after his back had been opened up, stripes and open wounds that still seeped into the bandages that covered them. 

"No," the torturer said, shaking his head, uttering a theatrical bark of laughter. His assistant yanked Votun's arms down and backward, sending pain shooting through his strained shoulders. They manacled his wrists behind him rather than overhead, so that when they lifted the chain to the manacles, they forced Votun's body forward into a deep bow. 

The torturer turned to his audience. "This criminal is a convicted spy. He's refusing to confess his crime! We gave him a chance yesterday, but this one's thick. You can see it, can't you? We'll have to be rougher on him than we would on most." He pulled out a sharp blade. "Let's see what we have to work with."

There were scattered cheers. Votun had nothing on beneath his prison robe but bandages. The torturer brandished his knife. Hearing a stifled gasp, Votun looked in Kiun's direction. 

Kiun's knuckles had turned white where he gripped the back of the railing. The guard next to him was not watching the torturer or Votun. He had his full attention on his charge. 

The first time, they'd left Kiun in the cell. Last time and this, they'd brought him to watch. Last time, Votun had thought knowing Kiun was seeing this would be worse than the torture. He knew better now. The second day of torture was still the worst thing that had ever happened to him. Today was going to be worse yet.

The torturer cut Votun's prison robe off him. Votun was not sure if the thin line of blood at his hip where the knife sliced his skin open had been carelessness or intention. It barely stung, but it probably looked dramatic. 

Some of the bandages fell to the floor of the dais atop the shredded rags that had been the robe, but some clung to the furrows the whip had left on his back the day before. The torturer yanked off the rest of the bandages that wrapped Votun's torso, leaned so close to look that Votun felt his hot breath sting against the cuts. "Your back is still too raw, scum." He pulled out the three prong whip he'd used before, took two steps backward, and swung in a practiced motion. 

Lines of pain cut into Votun's ass and the backs of his thighs. His neck ached no matter whether he held his head up or let it dangle. His strained shoulders burned from the inside out, but the pain from each stroke of the three-headed whip drowned all those discomforts into nothing. 

He waited until the fifth stroke to scream. Had to make it look like it was being forced out of his throat, had to satisfy the crowd, and the screams were entirely too ready to be released by the time he set them free. 

He could do this. He could get through this. He would scream and then he would cry and he would feel nothing but lines of fire, nothing but pain, and then after, Kiun would take care of him. Would wash his wounds and touch him with warm, kind hands and for that, Votun could get through this.

"All this will stop if you're ready to talk and to confess your crimes, scum," the torturer said, giving them both a breather, shifting the horrible whip from one hand to the other. The assistant turned Votun in circles during this break, so every side of the crowd could get a look at every side of their victim. Some of them wanted to see the blood, Votun thought, others would rather see his face or his nakedness. 

It was forever and a year when they were done, Votun did not know how long in reality, minutes, hours? The sun was hidden behind clouds and he could not see how far it had moved, nor could he quite remember what direction was east. His legs were barely holding him, flesh ragged and burning from his waist to the backs of his knees. "And he is still holding out," the torturer announced, no longer so fresh as he was at the beginning. Tiredness audible in his voice. "Tomorrow, scum, since your back is scored entirely, we start on your front. We will try to be careful of your jewels." He jabbed the handle of the whip into Votun's balls to the laughter of the crowd. Even over the raucous sounds of the Cairelians, Votun could hear Kiun's gasp. "Can't promise no accidents. But we'll try."

When the assistant unshackled Votun's arms, he tried to flex them both. The right responded, cramping painfully, but the left arm hung limp from the shoulder, dislocated. Votun told himself he would be fine. His shoulder could be set by anyone. Probably Kiun could do it. With Kiun's help, Votun could do it himself. 

Tomorrow. He'd made it another day. 

But it would be worse, tomorrow. 

\---------------------------

"You have to tell them something," Kiun said. Votun's forehead was chill against his fingertips. Like the three day hung roast Kiun's father, the town butcher, had told him not to touch. 

On this third day of questioning Votun had hung like meat for hours. "When I begged them to stop," Votun whispered, his breath labored. When he caught it again, he continued, "it was only because I thought the people watching" -- another pause to breathe -- "might turn against them. Out of pity."

"I know they can't break you," Kiun said, pouring water from the ewer onto his cloth, warming it against his stomach before wiping Votun's brow to clean away the sweat. It might make the chill worse, even warmed to his core body temperature. Kiun did his best, but with only a rag his best care was inadequate. Votun would die before he broke. Kiun wished it weren't so.

"It's not so bad." 

"I can see how bad it is with my own eyes." Kiun blinked, then made and held eye contact. "Also, you're a terrible liar. But it's not weakness, whatever you say when they're... hurting you... if you don't answer their questions. I promise, it's not." It wasn't Votun's pleas for mercy that were breaking him. It wasn't even Votun's suffering. It was knowing they would destroy him beyond recovery, and even if the torture didn't kill Votun, Kiun dreaded what it would do to him later, when there wasn't a torturer to resist, but his own body wouldn't stop tormenting him...

Kiun had seen it before. The lingering pain of a victim of this kind of treatment, ten years on, twenty. How changed they were, how bitter and twisted. He couldn't let that happen to this man. Not for his country, not for Votun's own honor, not for anything.

 _I'm the weak one,_ Kiun thought. He couldn't say it. But he knew: he was the one who would break. Maybe not if they tortured him, but they wouldn't, not in Cairelon. Votun looked tough, big and scarred, dark, the sort of person Cairelians thought deserved such treatment. Kiun, though, looked like their sons, their nephews, looked half a decade younger than his twenty-one years, and if they tortured him, people might really turn against them.

"Thank you for," Votun said. He ran out of words and breath simultaneously, waving his hand to indicate instead. Votun winced when he extended his shoulder in the gesture. 

"I'm grateful to be permitted to care for you," Kiun said. He meant it. It was part of how they were going to break him, but he was still grateful. They wouldn't have to touch him. What they were doing to Votun was more than enough. Letting him see it up close, the toll that only three days of this had taken on his lover's strong body -- letting him be the one to try to care for him, with inadequate supplies, in a room too cold and wet and bare -- smarter than he'd given them credit for.

Kiun mused that if Votun had realized how much Kiun knew, how many more secrets he had than Votun, and how much less loyal he was willing to be, he might have killed Kiun himself rather than allow him to care for his injuries. But Votun, working for the Duke's Guard, certainly thought his cellmate had been nothing but a servant, a man in the wrong place at the wrong time, an innocent. 

Looking innocent had always been part of what made Kiun such a good spy, had probably been why the Shadows of Yttn recruited him. Their captors might know, and they might not. Torturing Votun might be a brilliant plan on their part to turn Kiun, or it might merely be luck. Either way, it hardly mattered. 

One more day of this and Kiun would crack. And, knowing that, he thought, why put Votun through it? He leaned as close as he could without jostling the sling he'd rigged up from bandages that used to be his own shirt. If he was given proper care soon, Votun could recover, could be back to full strength in his Duke's service in a couple of months. 

He helped Votun find the least uncomfortable position he could in the bare cell, leaning on the smoothest part of the wall, furthest from the draft. "I'll be back as soon as I can," he lied. And then the truth. "I love you."

He saw the startled look in Votun's eyes. He'd never said anything of the sort since they'd been captured, not even when he was about to climax with Votun's fist pumping his cock. They both knew their captors were listening. 

Kiun thought that when he failed to return, when, he hoped, Votun was released without further torture, that he would realize it had been a kind of goodbye. He wished, without much hope at all, that Votun would know it had been the truth. Not that he'd ever want to see Kiun again, not after he found out what Kiun had done, but that was the price he'd have to pay for saving Votun. 

And he'd have to anyway, tomorrow, so he might as well save him now. Save them both the extra day of torment. Kiun knew Votun wouldn't want this. He would want Kiun to hold out as long as he could. He would want, for that matter, to sacrifice both their lives to keep their secrets.

"I'm sorry," Kiun said under his breath as he went to betray himself and his lover to their enemy. "I'm weak. You're more important, that's all." He thought about lying, about inventing something plausible that might save Votun without giving up both their honor, but he didn't want to risk it. If it didn't work, there'd be nothing left. 

So Kiun made his bargain with their captors.

\-----

Kiun was gone when Votun woke. The first thought through Votun's mind was Kiun in his place on the platform, shackled, naked. The second thought was to wonder why he didn't hurt more and how he had slept so deeply. He'd been given a drug? That could answer both questions.

Before he had time to let his imagination spin more horrors to distract him from the dread of returning to the stage, to another day of his body and mind besieged before the masses, he heard the familiar voice. 

"Votun. Are you awake? Can you stand?"

As carefully as an old man, Votun got to his feet. The prison robe hung loosely on him over the bandages. 

The cell door swung open. "We haven't much time. If we can make it out of here, I've found us a way home." 

It wasn't believable. It almost had to be a trick. But Votun wouldn't believe that Kiun would lend himself to such a thing. If this hope was only another sort of torture, he would walk to it as willingly as he had stepped to the other sort half a day earlier.

Maybe it was all a dream. If his injuries hadn't begun to hurt so much when he moved, Votun might have thought it must be. As soon as he decided it was real, a question came to him. Perhaps it should have occurred to him sooner, but he wasn't at his sharpest, which under the circumstances he didn't think was surprising.

When they were hidden in the back of a transport taking a shipment of squash to Yttenland, on the way home at last, Votun finally had to ask Kiun that question. "How did you do it?" 

Kiun didn't answer. Votun hadn't thought he would. Maybe he was relieved not to know. It had to be bad. There had been no good ways out of that place, and Votun had not even thought there were bad ones. But somehow, Kiun had found one.

"You don't have to answer," Votun said finally, after the silence had stretched for miles. 

"Good." Kiun's fingers found Votun's, wove between them to mesh their hands together tightly. 

"It's enough that we got out."

"Good," Kiun repeated.

"It'll be all right."

"Shut up," Kiun said.

"It will," Votun insisted.

Kiun was quiet, holding his hand. Votun could feel him trembling. He didn't know what was wrong: they had escaped. Maybe it was relief, maybe it was regret for whoever he'd had to be fucked by or kill or deceive to get them out. Neither of those seemed right. 

"We're together and we're going home," Votun said softly. "What happened in Cairelon -- forget about it. As much as you can. Think about now. Think about tomorrow."

Kiun curled against him and rested his head against Votun's chest. "You're right. I saved you. The rest -- doesn't matter." He took a deep breath, sat back again. His face looked older than Votun had ever seen before. Not that there were any more lines, or that Kiun's cheek was less round or soft. It was something in his eyes.

There was something very _wrong,_ there in Kiun's eyes. Votun made the conscious choice to forget that. To forget he had seen whatever it was that Kiun was hiding, to leave it behind with the pain and the humiliation of three days of public torture. "It never happened." Not to either of them. 

That was the only way they could truly go home.


End file.
